Psychobabble: Polygraph lies: „So what of the responses that the polygraph measures? The idea that respiration, heart rate or blood pressure are reliable indicators of deception is almost entirely unfounded and in effect the Polygraph test is nothing more than a fancy stress test. It will tell you that if people are nervous or not but in the context of a police interrogation, a reasonably stressful event on it’s own, it’s unlikely that you can determine that this nervousness is caused by an attempt at deception. One of the main issues is that people’s physiological activity differs wildly – someone who sweats a lot is more likely to be branded a liar by a polygraph test.”

Myth 5: Everyone Should Drink 64-Ounces or 8 Glasses of Water Every Day

Myth 6: High-Sodium Foods Taste Salty, So Avoid Salty Snacks

Myth 7: Eating Eggs Will Jack Up Your Cholesterol

Myth 8: Searing Meat Seals In Juices

Myth 9: Aluminum Foil and Cookware Is Linked to Alzheimer’s Disease

Myth 10: Don’t Eat After 6/7/8PM”

The Agreeable Power of Sugar: „New research confirms an old cliche: you are what you eat. A team of psychologists recently found that not only are sweets-lovers perceived as more agreeable, but they may actually be more agreeable”

Why Aren’t We Smarter?: „[…] the success of the system is achieved through balancing various aspects of cognitive performance by ensuring that no specific trait dominates to the exclusion of others.

While this doesn’t suggest that cognitive processes cannot be improved, it clearly indicates that one must be careful in assessing what constitutes improvement so that declines in abilities elsewhere are not masked or ignored. It also suggests that the simple „more is better” perspective doesn’t hold over the cognitive system.

This gives rise to a performance curve that will peak and then begin to decline, suggesting that there are upper bounds to the improvement of any particular cognitive trait, before it begins to impact other traits. A balance must be maintained so that subgoal achievement can be maximized.”

Do Vitamins Actually Work?: „I recommend vitamin B12 supplements for people who avoid animal products. In many cases, I recommend probiotic supplements. A healthy gut is very important for overall health, and too many people wreck their gut flora (aka the friendly critters in our colon that help with immunity and nutrient absorption) with poor diets, exposure to environmental toxins, and stress. Probiotic supplements should ideally be purchased refrigerated and stored that way at home.

[…]

Vitamin D deficiency is rampant. The latest research shows that current recommendations for 600 International Units a day are too low. Part of the problem is that recommendations are made solely on vitamin D’s role in bone health, while newer research takes into consideration the multitude of functions vitamin D is necessary for. I urge all my clients to take 2,000 to 4,000 International Units a day. If it seems like too much, keep in mind that if you get your vitamin D from the sun, the body produces 10,000 International Units and then ceases production.”

Kurt Vonnegut’s dark, sad, cruel side is laid bare: „The book paints a picture of a man who was often distant from his children, cruel to a long-suffering first wife, caught in an unpleasant second marriage and spent much of his later years depressed and angry. „Cruel, nasty and scary are the adjectives commonly used to describe him by the friends, colleagues, and relatives Shields quotes,” wrote one reviewer, Wendy Smith, on the Daily Beast website. The New York Times reviewer, Chris Buckley, called Shields’s portrayal „sad, often heartbreaking”.

[…]

Vonnegut definitely had survived a lot. His once wealthy family was impoverished by the Great Depression, causing grim strains in his parents’ marriage. His mother committed suicide. His beloved sister died of breast cancer, a day after her husband was killed in a train accident. But the defining horror of Vonnegut’s life was his wartime experience and surviving the Dresden bombing, only to be sent into the ruins as prison labour in order to collect and burn the corpses.”

Viral Infections Might Be Our Best Hope Against AIDS & Other Confounding Diseases: „Intriguingly, we have seen some profound beneficial effects from viral interactions. One study showed that curing the common cold might be a very bad idea. A group led by Ian Mackay in Australia collected nasal mucus from 1,247 people with cold-like symptoms and used PCR to test each sample for 17 different kinds of virus known to cause runny noses. People with rhinovirus infections—the most common type in the group—were eight times less likely to also be infected with flu virus than would been expected if there was no interference. That’s important because flu kills at least 30,000 people a year in the U.S. while rhinoviruses don’t kill anyone. This protective effect of rhinoviruses has been confirmed by a similar study among military recruits in the U.S.

Another beneficial case of interference is that of GB virus and HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. GB virus is passed from person to person in the same ways HIV is, but it doesn’t seem to cause any illness on its own. On the contrary, men who were infected with both GB virus and HIV, before there were drugs to treat AIDS, lived longer and were healthier than men not infected or whose immune systems destroyed the GB virus.

Viral interference has also shown potential to prevent cancers caused by human papillomavirus, the virus that causes cervical cancer. Human papillomavirus infects only cells near the surface of the cervix and it makes these cells grow faster than they should, sometimes leading to cancer. A parvovirus called AAV is able to infect those same surface cells, but only if HPV already is in them. Unlike HPV alone, HPV and AAV together cause the cells to die instead of divide, so tumor formation is averted. AAV is also sexually transmitted, so in this case, two STIs are better than one.”

How high an SPF should one choose? Is SPF 60 really that much better than SPF 30? What does “broad spectrum” mean? Are all sunscreen ingredients equally effective? And equally safe?
And perhaps the most frightening question: Why has the incidence of melanoma, the deadliest of skin cancers, doubled since sunscreens (as opposed to tanning lotions) became popular?

In a study published on Jan. 31 in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers randomly assigned 120 healthy but sedentary men and women (average age mid-60s) to one of two exercise groups. One group walked around a track three times a week, building up to 40 minutes at a stretch; the other did a variety of less aerobic exercises, including yoga and resistance training with bands.

After a year, brain scans showed that among the walkers, the hippocampus had increased in volume by about 2 percent on average; in the others, it had declined by about 1.4 percent. Since such a decline is normal in older adults, “a 2 percent increase is fairly significant,” said the lead author, Kirk Erickson, a psychologist at the University of Pittsburgh. Both groups also improved on a test of spatial memory, but the walkers improved more.